Still Protecting Him, After All These Years
by itsthetruth
Summary: The Master and The Doctor's best friend, The Soul, finds The Master hiding as a human preparing for Utopia after escaping the Time War. But as Harry Saxon overthrows planet Earth, The Soul has to take both sides of the Time Lords without getting herself killed. Crap summary, I know. Set from Utopia 3x10 onwards.


Of course he'd use her name to hide.

Chantho dodged the cable as The Master tried to stab her with it, making him fall and electricute himself. He groaned in pain and got up, sneering at Chantho.

"Koschei." She said, sounding scared and upset, making The Master stop. "Oh god Koschei I am so sorry." She pressed a button on her watch as The Master turned and made his way towards The TARDIS, making the illusion of being a blue insect dissapear and instead becoming a young woman of about 25 with elbow length blonde, wavy hair. She panicked as she heard running footsteps coming after her before bolting into The TARDIS after The Master. "Koschei be careful!" She gasped, helping him up as he leaned against the console. The Master caught her gaze and stiffened.

"Yana?" The Master asked croakily before pulling away from her and throwing his head back, the regeneration energy flooding through The TARDIS before reappearing, younger with shorter brown hair, staring at her. "You're alive."

"I'm asking you really properly! Just stop! Just think!" The Doctor shouted through the TARDIS doors. The Master lunged forward and pulled a lever on the console, locking the doors.

"Koschei, what are you doing?" She whispered.

"Use my name." He called out to The Doctor.

"Master. I'm sorry." The Master ran around the console, pulling levers as she watched, shocked before running to the doors, bashing on them.

"THETA!" She screamed, although The Doctor couldn't hear her.

"Doctor stop him!" Martha and Jack shouted. But that was the point, he couldn't, only she was ever able to control The Master, their best friend, The Soul.

_"Theta! Koschei!" The blonde, wavy haired teenager shouted as she ran through the Academy. The Soul was just about to turn 300, equal to a 16 year old human and about to leave the Academy, just like The Doctor and The Master. She ran up to her two best friends dorm door and banged on it with her fist. Seconds later the door was swung by a half asleep Master, with his flicky black hair in his eyes._

_"What Yana?" He mumbled._

_"Where's Theta?" She asked, grabbing his hand and pulling him the room to find The Doctor sitting on the bed, designing a new form of screwdriver. "Theta!" She said breatlessly, pulling The Master to sit down on his bed with her. _

_"I'm gonna go with sonic, sorry Koschei." The Doctor muttered._

_"No Theta, shutup a second!" The Soul reached over and pulled the blueprints away from him and threw them to the floor._

_"Oi!" He frowned as she turned to speak to him and The Master. "What was that for?"_

_"I have to talk to both of you."_

_"Yana, what's this about?" The Master mumbled, closing his eyes and leaning his head against his best friends shoulder._

_"After we graduate, we're leaving."_

_"Leaving?" The Doctor frowned. _

_"Me and Mother, we're leaving Gallifrey, moving away."_

_"That's not legal is it?" The Master asked._

_"Mother got special permission from Rassilon and the high council." The Master lifted his head up slowly and opened his eyes, staring at his best friend, just like The Doctor was. _

_"What?" The Master whispered._

_"But, you can't!" The Doctor spluttered._

"Why do you want to hurt him, Koschei?" The Soul asked as she and The Master stood, staring in a mirror, about to leave so The Master could talk to the press.

"A lot of things have happened with us Yana, since you left Gallifrey."

"But when we all last met, the three of us, you never said anything then."

"Well Theta wouldn't, would he?" The Master muttered.

"Well of course _Theta _wouldn't, but neither did you!"

"We didn't want to upset you."

"Koschei..."

"I just thought I could imagine, just for a few moments, it was just like old times again." The Master paused for a second before laughing at his own absurbity. He turned to The Soul and smiled as she stood in her strapless blue dress, hardly believing she was here.

_"Theta!" The Soul shouted as she ran through the battlefield, dodging around the other screaming time lords as they ran in and out of the fire and explosions. "Koschei!" She shouted out, turning round and looking. She kept running before the three time lords all ran into each other. The Doctor, now in his 8th regeneration, and The Master, now in his 7th, stared at The Soul in shock. It had been so many hundreds of years since they'd seen her last, when they waved her off on the shuttle just after they had graduated from the academy, but they still recognised her as she was still in her first regeneration. "I could sense it." She shouted over the noise to them. "From millions of miles away. I had to come back, to find you both. We have to go."_

_"Yana, we can't!" The Doctor finally mustered up the courage to say. _

_"Theta, this whole world is gonna crash and burn, there's nothing we can do!" She exclaimed, starting to cry but The Doctor just shook his head. "All those hundreds of years I waited to come back for you two!" She turned and ran off through the battlefield._

_"Yana!" The Master shouted as he and The Doctor tried to see her through the thousands of people screaming and running. "If she's death Theta, I'll never forgive you!" He roared at The Doctor before running off into the crowd to find The Soul. _

"You went to find me?" The Soul asked softly.

"But the thing is, how did you find me?" The Master asked.

"I heard that you'd been ressurected, that you used the Chameleon Arch to hide yourself as a human on Earth, so I went to find you. I couldn't leave you on your own, after we could have found Theta and gone home again. But we ended up there a lot longer then I thought we would."

"We'll find Gallifrey again Yana, I promise."

"Harry." There was a knock on the door and Lucy Saxon put her head round the door. "It's time."

The Doctor, Martha and Jack watched in horror as The Master stood on the TV in the busy street, adressing the country with his wife Lucy at his side.

"You gassed them." The Soul spat as The Master walked out of the room and pushed past her, down the empty corridor, although she followed him quickly. "You _gassed _them Koschei!" She shouted at him.

"Not now, I have to go talk to my people."

"They're not your people Koschei!" The Soul snapped. "You're not human!" The Master turned round and stared at her furiously. "What is this for, what's your plan? Is this to hurt Theta? The three of us can battle across the stars but not on Earth." She hissed. "I don't understand how this would help us find Gallifrey again."

"Don't you understand?" He roared. "I'm doing all of this for _you_. You're still protecting him, after all these years. He never listened to you Yana, and I did."

"You want the old days back, yeah?" She asked as The Mster turned and started to walk down the corridor again. "And that's why you're trying to blow him up?" She shouted after him.

"The Toclafane?" The Soul asked as the door shut behind her as the camera crew left, leaving just her and The Master. "All those stories when we were little, just like these human kids with the bogeyman."

"Hush now Yana, time to make a phone call."

"Just let us find Theta together, without hurting Martha or Jack or the rest of the human race, please Koschei." The Master took his mobile out of his pocket and pluuged it into the handsfree device on the table as it hacked into Martha Jones' call.

"Don't tell anyone! Just hide!" Martha begged.

"Ooh, a nice little game of hide-and-seek." The Master laughed as The Soul walked around and stood beside him, staring at the phone. "I love that. But I'll find you, Martha Jones. Been a long time since we saw each other. Must be, what, one hundred trillion years?"

"Let them go, Saxon. Do you hear me? Let them go!" Martha screamed, making The Master smile.

There was a scuffling as the phone was taken from Martha. "I'm here." The Doctor said.

"Doctor."

"Master."

"I like it when you use my name."

"You chose it."

"Psychiatrist's field day." The Soul muttered to herself.

"As you chose yours. The man who makes people better. How sanctimonious is that?"

"So… Prime Minister."

"I know. It's good, isn't it?"

"Who are those creatures? 'Cause there's no such thing as the Toclafane. It's just a made-up name like the Bogeyman." The Master looked up at The Soul and smirked before looking at the phone.

"Do you remember all those fairy tales about the Toclafane when we were kids? Back home. Where is it, Doctor?"

"Gone."

"How can Gallifrey be gone?"

"It burnt." The Master and The Soul looked at each other, both geniunley hurting.

"And the Time Lords?" The Master asked as he squeezed his best friends hand.

"Dead. And the Daleks… more or less. What happened to you?"

"The Time Lords only resurrected me because they knew I'd be the perfect warrior for a Time War. I was there when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform. I saw it. I ran. I ran so far. Made myself human so they would never find me because…I was so scared."

"I know." The Doctor sighed.

"All of them? But now you, which must mean…"

"I was the only one who could end it. And I tried. I did. I tried everything."

"What did it feel like, though? Two almighty civilizations burning. Oh, tell me, how did it feel?"

"Stop it!"

"You must have been like God."

"Koschei." The Soul hissed quietly.

"I've been alone ever since. But not anymore. Don't you see, all we've got is each other."

"Are you asking me out on a date?"

"You could stop this right now. We could leave this planet. We could fight across the constellations if that's what you want. But not on Earth."

"That's just what she'd say." The Master laughed.

"That was the last I saw of both of you. Did you ever find her?"

"She fled across the stars."

"You loved her." The Doctor muttered.

"So did you." The Master said. "Anyway, too late."

"Why do you say that?"

"The drumming." He started to drum his fingers on the table. "I thought it would stop but it never does. Never ever stops. Inside my head, the drumming, Doctor. The constant drumming."

"I could help you. Please, let me help."

"It's everywhere. Listen, listen, listen. Here come the drums. Here come the drums."

"What have you done? Tell me how you've done this. What are those creatures? Tell me!" The Doctor shouted.

"Ooh, look. You're on TV." The Master said, looking at his laptop as The Doctor, The Master and Jack appeared on the news.

"Stop it! Answer me!"

"No, really. You're on telly! You and your little band, which, by the way, is ticking every demographic box. So, congratulations on that. Look, there you are! Ha! You're public enemies number one, two and three. Oh, and you can tell handsome Jack that I've sent his little gang off on a wild goose chase to the Himalayas so he won't be getting any help from them." He switched over to the CCTV of The Doctor, Martha and Jack standing outside a shop. "Now, go on, off you go. Why not start by turning to the right?" The Doctor looked directly to the security camera before taking out his sonic and sonicing the camera. "Ooh, you public menace. Better start running. Go on. Run! Run for your life, Doctor! I said, run!" The Master shouted one last time before hanging up.

"Koschei, give it up." The Soul whispered, crying. "Gallifrey is gone now, there's nothing we can do! Let's just leave Koschei."

"One last thing Yana." The Master whispered.

"Have you seen these things?" The Master asked as a Toclafane appeared in his office as he and The Soul sat at the table, watching the television on the laptop. "This planet's amazing. Television in their stomach. Now that is evolution."

"Is the machine ready?" The Toclafane asked.

"Tomorrow morning. It reaches critical at 8:02 precisely."

"We have to escape. Because it's coming, sir. The darkness, the never-ending darkness. The terrible, terrible cold. We have to run and run and run!"

"8:00 tomorrow morning. Tell your people. The world is waiting." The Toclafane teleported out again as The Soul frowned.

"What machine Koschei?" She asked softly, putting her hand on his arm.

"Something for you Yana, after all these years." The Master smiled at her before getting up and walking out of the room.

"What are you planning Koschei?" The Soul mumbled.

"It's a sky ship." The Soul whispered as she sat one side of The Master, Lucy on the other.

"Ministry of Defence. I helped design this place." The Master told his wife. "Every detail."

"Two minutes, everyone!" President Winters said, climbing the steps and facing the cameras. "According to the treaty, all armed personnel are requested to leave the flight deck immediately. Thank you."

"Jelly baby?" The Master asked Lucy.

"Broadcasting at 7:58 with the arrival timed at 0800 precisely. And, uh, good luck to all of us."

"My fellow Americans, patriots, people of the world…I stand before you today as ambassador for humanity, a role I will undertake with utmost solemnity. Perhaps our Toclafane cousins can offer us much, but that is important is not that we gain material benefits, but that we learn to see ourselves anew." The Doctor, Martha and Jack slipped into the room, unnoticed, as well as The Doctor not noticing The Soul. "For as long as man has looked to the stars, he has wondered what mysteries they hold. Now we know we are not alone…"

"This plan, you gonna tell us?" Jack asked.

"If I can get this," He held up the key with the perception filter. "Around the Master's neck…cancel out his perception, they'll see him for real. It's just hard to go unnoticed with everyone on red alert. If they stop me…you've got a key."

"Yes sir."

"I'll get him." Marta seethed.

"And I ask you now, I ask of the human race, to join with me in welcoming our friends. I give you the Toclafane." The spheres appeared around President Winters and he turned to them. "My name is Arthur Coleman Winters, President-Elect of the United States of America and designated representative of the United Nations. I welcome you to the planet Earth and its associated moon."

"You're not the Master." One of them said.

"We like the Mr Master." A second said.

"We don't like you." A third said.

"I… can be Master, if you so wish. I will accept mastery over you if that is God's will."

"Man is stupid."

"Master is our friend."

"Where's my Master, pretty please?"

"Oh, all right then. It's me." The Master stood up and adressed the cameras. "Ta-da! Sorry. Sorry, I have this effect. People just get obsessed. Is it the smile? Is it the aftershave? Is it the capacity to laugh at myself? I don't know. It's crazy!"

"Saxon, what are you talkin' about?" Winters asked.

"I'm taking control, Uncle Sam. Starting with you. Kill him." One of the Toclafane whirled round and shot a laser, disintergrating Winters causing chaos to erupt and people to point guns at The Master. He stared into the camera, "Now then, peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully." He laughed as The Doctor rushed forward and was grabbed by two guards, forcing him to kneel on the floor.

"Theta!" The Soul gasped, who had been watching in horror, standing up. The Master ran forward and pulled her by her hand back to the steps with him as they watched The Doctor.

"We meet at last, Doctor. Oh, ho! I love saying that!"

"Stop this! Stop it now!" The Doctor shouted.

"As if a perception filter's gonna work on me." The Master sneered.

"Koschei, stop this, please!" The Soul begged as The Doctor finally saw her, his hearts dropping.

"I done all of this for you Yana! I couldn't take you home, so I'll take this planet for you."

"It's not about owning planets Koschei, it's about seeing the beauty of the universe, the observation. Please Koschei, stop!"

"Oh, and look, it's the girlie and the freak." The Master smirked at Jack and Martha. "Although, I'm not sure which one's which." Jack raced forward towards The Master but he quickly he shot him, making him fall to the floor. "Laser screwdriver, who'd have sonic? I always had her design, in the back of my head. And the good thing is, he's not dead for long. I get to kill him again!" He sneered as Martha rushed to Jack.

"Master, just calm down. Just look at what you're doing. Just stop. If you could see yourself…" The Doctor begged.

"Oh, do excuse me, little bit of personal business. Back in a minute." He said to the camera. "Let him go." The guards pushed The Doctor to the floor. The Master sat down on the step, eye level with him as The Soul dropped to her knees, putting one hand on The Doctor's chest and one round his shoulders, holding him upright.

"It's ok Theta, I've got you." She whispered.

"It's that sound, the sound in your head. What if I could help?" The Doctor asked.

"Oh, how to shut him up? I know. Memory Lane! Professor Lazarus. Remember him? And his genetic manipulation device?Did you think that little Tish got that job merely by coincidence? I've been laying traps for you all this time. And if I can concentrate all that Lazarus technology into one little screwdriver…But, ooh, if I only had the Doctor's biological code. Oh, wait a minute, I do! I've got his hand!" He ran up the steps and opened a silver case sitting on a table to reveal The Doctor's hand. "And if Lazarus made himself younger, what if I reverse it? Another hundred years?" He twisted the screwdriver round and shot it at The Doctor, The Soul jumping out of the way just in time as Jack woke up again.

"Teleport." He said croakily as The Doctor screamed out in pain, sliding the vortex minipulator into Martha's hand.

"I can't."

"We can't stop him." The Soul begged Martha. "Get out of here. Get out." The process stopped and The Doctor was now leaning on all fours, now a old man. Martha crawled over to him as The Master gently helped The Soul up, placing a arm around her waist as she grabbed the lapels of his jacket, sobbing. "Please Koschei, remember the old days, us three, don't do this."

"Oh Yana." The Master whispered, placing a kiss to the side of her head.

"Doctor, I've got you." Martha said.

"Aw, she's a would-be doctor. But tonight, Martha Jones, we've flown 'em in all the way from prison—" The Master gestured over at the door as it slid open, guards escorting Martha's family in.

"The Toclafane, who are they? Who are they?" The Doctor asked breathlessly.

"Doctor, if I told you the truth, your hearts would break." The Master said, keeping a tight grip on The Soul as she tried to get to The Doctor.

"Is it time?" The Toclafane asked.

"Is it ready?"

"Is the machine singing?"

"Two minutes past." The Master let go of The Soul and took Lucy's hand, standing on top of the steps and holding the screwdriver in the air. "So! Earthings. Basically, um, end of the world. Here…come…the drums!" Suddenly, music started playing and Lucy started dancing along to it.

"How many do you think?" The Master asked, taking Lucy to look over at the sky as billions of Toclafane came down into the earth through a rip in the sky.

"I don't know."

"Six billion. Down you go, kids!"

"Shall we decimate them? That sounds good. Nice word—decimate. Remove one-tenth of the population!" Martha stood up, looked at her family, then Jack and then finally at The Doctor before teleporting off.

"Koschei!" The Soul shouted, standing up as The Master turned back to them. "STOP THIS NOW!" The Master stopped for a second and stared at his best friend crying, and for a second doubt spread through him before he sighed.

"A whole new world for us Yana." He said before running over and yanking The Doctor up towards the window, looking out at the fall of Earth with The Soul and Lucy. "And so it came to pass…that the human race fell and the Earth was no more. And I looked down upon my new dominion as master of all and I thought it…good."

"I leave you alone," The Soul whispered to the two time lords. "And you rip each other apart."


End file.
